Tim Farron finally opens up on whether he thinks gay sex is a sin

Written by David Singleton on 10 January 2018 in Diary

Diary

It turns out that the former Lib Dem leader does think gay sex is a sin after all.

During the general election campaign, Tim Farron did his utmost to dodge questions about his beliefs before finally telling the BBC's Eleanor Garnier that he did not believe gay sex was a sin. But not all of his colleagues were convinced by their leader's Damascene conversion.

"A Liberal Democrat election campaign which should have appealed to liberal voters of all ages has been undermined by the outdated opinions and views which Tim clearly holds," stated David Laws after Farron resigned.

Now the former Lib Dem leader has finally spoken honestly about his beliefs regarding gay sex – and it turns out that Laws was right to smell a rat.

Appearing on Christian-focused radio station Premier, Farron was asked whether he felt pressured into saying that that he did not believe gay sex was a sin.

“Yeah. I’m going to write about this more in the coming weeks. But the bottom line is yes, of course I did,” he said.

“There are things, including that, that I said that I regret. There was a sense in which I felt, look, I’ve got to get this off my table … I would say foolishly and wrongly I attempted to push it away by giving an answer that frankly was not right.”

Could he have dealt with it better? Farron suggested he should have tried to explain the theology behind his beliefs better, but quickly concluded that most journalists would not have been interested.

“It’s tricky really. In the end, if you’re a Christian you’ve got a very clear idea of what you think a sin is. It is us falling short of the glory of God. That is something that all of us share,” he said.

“Maybe I could have explained that, and the biblical teaching on sex and sexuality. But let’s be brutally honest, with the exception of programmes like this you don’t get more than 20 seconds to get your message across.”

For good measure, Farron also complained on Premier that there were not enough fellow believers in Lib Dem HQ.

He said: “I know that others were praying for me but there is a sense in which I was isolated. I had a wonderful team around me at HQ but with one exception, there were no Christians."